Audree's Reading Response — Jan 23

 Excerpts from Invisible Planets: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Fiction in Translation 

Introduction by Ken Liu

    Liu makes the point that "Chinese science-fiction" is an unhelpful and ill defined category. Anglophone science varies depending on when and where it was written, and so indeed the language itself doesn't seem to be that important of an aspect of distinction. The idea that Chinese science fiction exists as a homogeneous genre feels to me like a thought that comes from people who are ignorant to the culture. It makes me think of the psychological phenomenon that we tend to have where when there are members of a group that is not our own, we generalize it and seem to think that they are homogeneous while our group is diverse and complex. 

    Another thing I found interesting in this introduction was how Liu says that these stories should be looked at as stories not just about China but about people, the world, humanity etc. Writers don't only have the ability to write about their culture, they can also write about universal human experiences and say things with meanings that go beyond boarders.

2. Tontong's Summer by Xia Jia 

    The scene that struck me the most in this story is the scene when Tongtong first finds out about her Grandpa's tumor, and is crying in the arms of her mother. She sees the gray hairs in her mother's eyes, and nothing seems to make sense, everything felt "unreal." I found this to be very poignant, as it illustrates a child coming face to face with mortality. Coming face to face with her loved ones mortality. Her parents, her grandpa, these are people that she looks up to, and understanding that they will not be around forever is something that is hard to understand. I found this especially interesting because of the contrast with the robots, who are not moral, at least not in the way that humans are. It was really touching that the Grandpa's idea was to enable elderly people to help each other out via the robots, by sort of appropriating machines through which they could still be themselves. The robots never became personalities of their own, only tools to help humanity. 

3. Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang 

    This story is ripe with social commentary, about class, about technology about corruption and our tendency to comply with things we don't agree with when it best suits our own interests. When Lao Ge is explaining to Lao Dao the plans that those in First Space have to increase GDP, it struck me as depressingly accurate. The idea the living is for the lucky. In this story, those who are more privilege quite literally have more time to live, a phenomenon that while not literal in our world, may as well be the case. The workers in Third Space are the backbone of society, but they have the least amount of time to live, they sleep while others get to enjoy life.